In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at the Trump Administration’s move to halt Harvard from enrolling international students, a 4-D approach to quantum computing, a drug combination that could lead to healthy aging and more. You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here.
A federal judge has blocked a Trump administration plan to ban Harvard from enrolling international students, which was enacted last week. The move was the latest in a number of actions the Administration has taken–including freezing billions of dollars in research grants–against the nation’s oldest university. Harvard has challenged the administration’s legal authority to do this in multiple lawsuits.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he would begin “aggressively” revoking visas for the nearly 280,000 Chinese students studying across the country. International students as a whole contributed about $44 billion to the U.S. economy last year, and they often play a key role in a college’s finances, since they typically pay full tuition. Enacting policies that reduce their number, on top of cuts in grant funding, mean that colleges will have fewer resources to spend on research programs.
Universities in Hong Kong are trying to attract the affected international students, offering dedicated scholarships and help finding accommodations. These follow similar moves by China to woo researchers away from the United States in the wake of cuts to research grants and other policy changes.
Stay tuned.
This Startup Is One Step Closer To A More Practical Quantum Computer
One of the biggest challenges of quantum computing is that its fundamental unit, the quantum bit (or “qubit”) is fragile and easily disturbed by the environment, causing errors in computation that require correction. That’s a slow process and one reason quantum computers aren’t yet practical. Typically, this is managed by building redundancy into these systems so that they have multiple qubits that process the same information. In practice, this means quantum computers are much larger–and more energy intensive–as they scale up.
Quebec-based Nord Quantique is taking a different approach. It has developed a qubit with built-in information redundancy, which could herald a quantum computer much smaller than those being built today.
CEO Julien Camirand-Lemyre told me that Nord Quantique has done this by using multiple photons–particles of light–to encode information several times over in a single qubit instead of having redundant multiple qubits. This is a much more complicated approach than its competitors’ (for one thing, it requires what’s effectively four-dimensional geometry) but the benefit is that the computer itself will potentially be smaller and more energy efficient.
“It’s really not only a way to do better error correction, but a way to simplify the system at scale from all perspectives,” he said.
Nord Quantique has successfully validated the technique in hardware with a single qubit. Its next step, Camirand-Lemyre told me, is to build a 4-qubit chip, which it hopes to have up and running by the end of the year.
DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: DRUG COMBINATION EXTENDS LIFESPAN (OF MICE)
In a new study published this week, researchers found that a combination of cancer drugs Rapamycin and Trametinib extended the lifespan of mice by about 30%. The combination appeared to significantly reduce chronic inflammation as mice aged, improving their overall health. The scientists behind the study don’t think that a similar lifespan extending effect would be seen in humans, but said that clinical trials could be conducted to see if the drugs have any other benefits for elderly people.
FINAL FRONTIER: CHINA LAUNCHES ASTEROID EXPLORER
This week, China launched its Tianwen-2 spacecraft, sending it on a journey to visit an asteroid called 469219 Kamoʻoalewa. When it arrives in July of next year, Tianwen-2 will take samples from the surface and then send them back to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft will then continue its journey through the solar system for a planned rendezvous with a comet called 311P/PANSTARRS in the year 2035.
FORBES CALLED IT: RADIANT RAISES $165 MILLION
In 2023, I wrote about Radiant, a startup that is building portable nuclear reactors that can fit inside a shipping container. The idea is to use them in remote areas with no available electric grid or to help provide power during disasters. This week, the company announced that it raised $165 million in venture investment. The new capital comes just a few weeks after the company was selected by the Department of Energy to receive nuclear fuel, which it plans to use in the first test of one of its reactors next year.
WHAT ELSE I WROTE THIS WEEK
In my other newsletter, InnovationRx, Amy Feldman and I looked at how Hinge Health’s successful IPO may be a trendsetter for a new wave of digital health companies going public, Indian billionaire Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw’s ‘biosimilars’ business, changes to Covid vaccine guidance and more.
SCIENCE AND TECH TIDBITS
SpaceX launched its ninth test flight of Starship this week and like the two tests before, it failed. After reaching orbit, the spacecraft’s fuel tanks leaked, causing it to spin out of control and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, where it broke up before its planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Health tech startup Applied Cognition published a new study demonstrating that its wearable device can continuously track the brain’s glymphatic system, which removes toxic proteins. Dysfunctions in this system play a role in diseases like Alzheimer’s, but until now monitoring them required an MRI machine.
Researchers at Cornell University have developed a new way to deliver mRNA vaccines that potentially makes them more effective while reducing the risk of side effects.
Japanese startup ispace is one step closer to landing on the Moon. The company’s Resilience lander entered lunar orbit this week, where it will prepare for a scheduled landing on June 6.
PRO SCIENCE TIP: GIVE YOUNG EMPLOYEES A HARD PROJECT
Do you want to ensure that your new hires grow in their career and perform well? A new study suggests the best way to do that is to trust them with a complex project. Researchers tracked employees at a high-tech company over several years, and found that new employees assigned to more complicated tasks were more engaged and showed higher levels of learning. That translated into better employee evaluations and higher promotion rates.
WHAT’S ENTERTAINING ME THIS WEEK
I’ve been listening to Goodbye Small Head, the latest album by Ezra Furman. There are a lot of tracks to like here, in particular “Power of the Moon”, which has a Velvet Underground vibe; “Slow Burn”, which has the dreamlike quality of a Smashing Pumpkins ballad; and “A World of Love and Care”, which makes fantastic use of strings to drive its rhythms. One of the best things about Furman is that no two of her albums sound alike–they’re all distinct creations, and this is one of the best.
